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Countdown to 8 Diagrams, Part 7: Method Man.

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony appeared on Life After Death, and had a 2Pac guest spot on their Art Of War LP. Too Short appeared on Life After Death also, and rapped along side 2Pac on Ant Banks’ album. Redman appeared with Biggie on the classic posse cut “The Points”, and also appeared on “Got My Mind Made Up” on Pac’s All Eyez On Me LP. The point of all of this?

Method Man is only* MC to appear on a non-posthumous (no Duets nonsense) Biggie album — “The What” off Ready To Die — and a non-posthumous (no Pac’s Life bullshit) 2Pac album — the aforementioned “Got My Mind Made Up”. Wrap your mind around that.

[* - Did I miss someone? Help me out if I did. I am but one man, with slightly less than one brain.]

I think I came across this track over at WuTangCorp.com‘s massive collection of rare Wu tracks (although it doesn’t appear to be there anymore). This sounds like it was recorded just before — or maybe just after — “M.E.T.H.O.D. Man”, and one would assume that it served as an inspiration to Rae’s classic track of a similar name.

I remember reading a review of Wu-Tang Forever on MTV.com (MTV was somewhat respectable back then) that said that Meth’s appearances on the double-disc were the least impressive of the crew. True, Meth wasn’t as energetic as he was on, say, “Release Yo Delf” or “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing Ta Fuck Wit”, but lyrically, he was as sharp as he’d ever been… perhaps, sharper than ever. This is probably my favorite track on the whole double-disc, up there with “Heaterz”… and “Hellz Wind Staff”… and, of course “Triumph”… see why I said probably?

Meth must’ve really been on one in this recording session — I mean, how often does a guest MC get two verses on a song to the album artist’s one verse? The Smoking Section included Meth’s appearance here on a short list of rappers getting murdered on their own shit. I personally wouldn’t go as far as to ever say that GZA’s been murdered on his own shit, but Meth’s flow on this track is so against the grain. Definitely the stuff of legends.

I know that I sort of shunned posthumous Biggie releases just moments ago, but the fact that both Red and Meth actually worked with Biggie while he was alive makes this track more worthy of appreciation. Not to mention that both Red and Meth kill their verses (especially Meth), the recycled Biggie verse wasn’t too widespread beforehand (from a Biggie guest spot on a Tracey Lee album), and DJ Premier laced the beat. The only other way to get to hear Method Man over Primo is to have to withstand Fred Durst’s rapping, and no one should be subjected to that anymore than they already have been.

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Good stuff. I always liked Meth’s verse from “Box in Hand” off Ghost’s Ironman album. “100% mind, 100% body, %100 soul, individual…You f*cking with the star spangler, from the dawn’s early night with this head banger, boogie, represent the sh*t fully…” Meth is crazy underrated.

About ML

Metal Lungies aka ML is a collaborative music blog that was established in a set of high school hallways in Bethesda, MD in early 2005. Since then, ML has grown to have writers based out of Los Angeles, Buffalo, Washington DC, Ottawa, and New York. While our core content is hip-hop, we are very much ADD around here, so don’t be surprised to see our musings related to food, sports, games, and about 28932 other topics.